USA > California > Los Angeles County > History of Los Angeles county, Volume III > Part 70
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Doctor Hutchison is a member of the Los Angeles County, California State and American Medical Associations, and is chairman of the Nursing Committee of the National organization's department of standard for hospitals. He is a democrat in politics, a member of the Long Beach Lions International Club, is a thirty-second degree Scottish Rite Mason and Shriner and a member of the Presbyterian Church.
At Memphis, July 24, 1915, Doctor Hutchison married Miss Bessie Florence Smith, who was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, but was reared from childhood in Long Beach, California, being a graduate of the Long Beach Polytechnic High School in 1914. Doctor and Mrs. Hutchison have two living children, Jacob Anderson and William Courtney.
J. B. SUMTER has been a real estate and oil operator in Southern Cali- fornia for the past ten years. He is prominently identified as a property owner in the Signal Hill oil fields near Long Beach, and also owns several pieces of valuable down town business property in Long Beach. He has his business offices at 237 East First Street in Long Beach, and has directed the investment of a large amount of capital in real estate and oil properties in this section of Los Angeles County.
Mr. Sumter was born at Deadwood, Dakota Territory, March 13, 1888, son of James M. and Margaret (Parker) Sumter, who were pioneers in Dakota Territory, what is now the State of South Dakota. His mother is of Scotch-Irish Canadian stock and his father of English ancestry. The Sumters are an old American family, were Colonial settlers in Virginia, and one of the Sumters played a prominent part in the Revolution. Mr.
W. Jay Burgin.
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Sumter's parents are now living retired at Long Beach. His grandfathers were soldiers in the Civil war. James M. Sumter brought his family to California in 1911 and settled at Long Beach. He is well known in that city as the owner of the Sumter Apartments on East Ocean Avenue.
J. B. Sumter is the oldest of three sons and two daughters, one daughter is now deceased, while the others all live at Long Beach. Mr. Sumter was educated in the public schools at Deadwood, and subsequently studied pharmacy, graduating in 1907 with the degrees Ph. G. and Ph. C. from Highland Park College of Des Moines, Iowa. For two years he was in the drug business at Belle Fourche, South Dakota, and since then has been in business in the Southwest. Until two years ago he specialized in the development and marketing of arid lands in the Southwest, principally Utah and Virginia, and since then has been primarily identified with the oil and investment business. All his oil properties are in the Signal Hill District, and he is individually owner of much land in that territory, the scene of some of the most remarkable petroleum discoveries in California. Mr. Sumter has been a resident of Long Beach since 1913. He is vice president of the Blue Tank Pipe Line and Refining Company, is a director of the Simplex Petroleum Corporation, and was one of the promoters of nine other companies operating in this district.
Mr. Sumter is a democrat in politics. He is affiliated with Deadwood Lodge No. 508, Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, and with De- Mores Lodge No. 71, Knights of Pythias, at Belle Fourche, South Dakota. He belongs to the Long Beach Chamber of Commerce and the Petroleum Commercial Club of Long Beach.
On February 21, 1921, Mr. Sumter married Mrs. Leota C. Barrick at Santa Ana, California. She was born in Terre Haute, Indiana. She is a member of the Ebell Club of Long Beach.
W. JAY BURGIN, contractor and builder, has proved a vital and suc- cessful exponent of material and civic advancement in the wonder city of Long Beach, which now has a population of 85,000. He has proved his splendid initiative and administrative powers as a business man, and his personal advancement represents the result of his own ability and well ordered efforts ..
William Jay Burgin was born on a farm four miles northeast of Edgewood, Iowa, October 2, 1874, and is a son of Alva and Ellen J. (Stevens) Burgin, the father of whom was born at Belfast, Maine, and the latter of whom was born in the State of Michigan, she being still a resident of Edgewood, Iowa, and being seventy-three years of age at the time of this writing.
In the winter of 1917, Mrs. Ellen J. Burgin has the distinction of having presented to Edgewood its only park, which was originally a cow pasture opposite her home. Failing to enlist the co-operation of others in buying the property for development into a park, led her individually to buy the tract and to present it to the city, besides which her influence. and active work effected the improvement of the property into an attrac- tive park that is now the pride of her home city, where her circle of friends is coincident with that of her acquaintances and where gracious memories and associations cause her to remain among those whom she knows and is known by.
She has made three visits to California, but while appreciative of its manifold attractions, has not faltered in her allegiance to her old and loved home in the Hawkeye State. Her parents were natives of the State of New York, became carly settlers in Michigan and later were pioneers in Iowa. Her father was a farmer and also followed the carpenter's trade. He was at one time a partner of Stephen Bush, who built the first house at Long Beach, California, and whose daughter, a girlhood friend of Mrs. Ellen J. Burgin, here taught the first school.
The only sister of the subject of this review now resides at Cedar Falls, Iowa, she being the mother of two sons and three daughters, and the
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youngest daughter being now (1923) a student in the normal school at Cedar Falls. The daughter Doris passed two years in the home of her uncle, W. Jay Burgin, at Long Beach, and then became the wife of Carl Powell. Her mother is serving in Iowa as county president of the Women's Christian Temperance Union.
Alva Burgin gained his early education in the old Pine Tree State and was a youth at the time when he became a resident of Michigan. Concerning his father and paternal ancestors, W. Jay Burgin, of this review, has given the following: "Great-grandfather Burgin was a ship- builder on the coast of Maine (Belfast or Bath). Grandfather learned the trade from him, the wooden ships of the day having been mostly hewn out of native timber. Father was born in Maine and accompanied his parents to Michigan in the pioneer period of the history of that state. Grandfather was a farmer-builder, was called upon to make burial coffins when required in his neighborhood, and on his land he erected a log church. I can remember being at his home and seeing him on crutches. He was always working and when too old to work at his trade he conducted a crossroads grocery store. Everyone called him 'Uncle Joe.' He was the father of ten children. Grandmother lived with my folks after she was unable to be alone in her own home. My father, after coming out of the army, a poor man, worked in a saw mill, and after his marriage he bought the tract of timber land on which he built the log house in which I was born and where I was reared to the age of ten years, when a new and more pretentious house was constructed. My father was influential in his community, was the neighborhood adviser and was frequently called upon to settle disputes and controversies. He served as commander of the local post of the Grand Army of the Republic."
Alva Burgin served three years as a gallant soldier of the Union in the Civil war, he having been a member of the Thirteenth United States Regulars, which for a time constituted the bodyguard of General Sherman. Mr. Burgin was one of the honored pioneer citizens of Iowa at the time of his death in 1900, at Edgewood, where his widow still maintains her home.
Concerning conditions and incidents of his boyhood and early youth, W. Jay Burgin has written substantially as follows: "As a boy I helped father roll logs, and also held the line when he was getting out square timber for barns and bridges, and I also assisted in the work of the home farm. At the age of sixteen I was filing saws for the neighborhood, and could fell trees with the best of them. At the age of eleven years I harnessed a team alone and drove same to the plow, and I varied my activities as a youth by serving as captain of a baseball team. My first schooling was received in a log schoolhouse on my father's place, and there- after I attended district school and the public school at Edgewood, my educational advantages having been limited. After starting in business I saw the need of further education and took a correspondence course in architecture. I have been identified with building operations practically all my life. At the age of ten years I began to experiment with my grand- father's tools. At the age of twenty I helped to build a barn, and there- after I continued to be associated with building work in the home neighbor- hood. At the age of twenty-one years I built my first house, and within four years I was the leading contractor and builder at Edgewood. In 1903 the biggest business man in town persuaded me to take a gang of men and go to South Dakota and build a house and two large barns on some farms near Armour, this work requiring about three and one-half months. It was while there that the western idea got hold of me, and upon returning to Edgewood I closed up my business in my native state."
It was the year 1904 that Mr. Burgin came to California, and here he followed the carpenter's trade the first three years. He then engaged in contracting for cottages. He came to Long Beach to build a house for F. A. Densmore, an Edgewood, Iowa, man whom he had always known. A few years of smaller work led to larger and better jobs. About 1912 Mr. Burgin established a carpenter mill and shop at Long Beach, and here
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he now has a well equipped mill and cabinet shop, in connection with which he handles stocks of building materials, his plant and office being at the corner of Eleventh and Redondo avenues. He owns this property and a lot at 280 Lowena Drive, where he is erecting for himself a fine new residence at a cost of $15,000. His downtown office is in the building of the Pacific Southwest Trust & Savings Bank. He is a director of the Anchor Building and Loan Association. He is independent in politics and thus gives his support to men and measures meeting the approval of his judgment.
In 1920 Mr. Burgin was elected a member of the Board of Freeholders in connection with the adoption of a city charter, the new charter pro- viding a commission form of government, and he having been appointed chairman of the public utilities commission. This appointment was made while he was on a visit to his old home town of Edgewood, Iowa. Soon after his return to Long Beach he was appointed a director of the Chamber of Commerce, to fill an unexpired term, and he has continued a director of this vigorous and valued institution, besides having served as president of the East Long Beach Industrial & Improvement Association. He was captain in the American Protective League in the World war period and served also with the Home Guards, he having been found ineligible for active service in the army. Mr. Burgin served in 1916 as chancellor of the Long Beach Lodge of Knights of Pythias, and he is affiliated also with the Pythian Sisters, the Masonic fraternity, including the Order of the Eastern Star, and the Modern Woodmen of America. He holds member- ship in the local Kiwanis, Electric and Pacific clubs.
September 15, 1897, at Colesburg, Iowa, was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Burgin to Miss Edna Mae Alcorn. Mr. and Mrs. Burgin have three foster children: Lois and Edna Alcorn, and also Bartley Francis Alcorn, who was taken into their home shortly after his birth and the death of his mother, wife of a brother of Mrs. Burgin.
COL. FRANK C. ROBERTS, founder and editor of the Long Beach Daily Telegram, died January 22, 1922. There was not a civic organization or institution, and hardly any society or association or prominent individual in the City of Long Beach who did not experience a sense of personal loss in his death. He was a great editor, and the Daily Telegram expressed a more than ordinary achievement in successful journalism. But to this community which he so deeply loved he gave more than a paper-he gave himself, in a personal service actuated by the highest ideals.
Colonel Roberts' service to the community of Long Beach was an obsession with him, and he served with his heart and soul the cause of civic development. If Long Beach ever develops its harbor it will be due more largely to Colonel Roberts than to any other individual citizen or association, as he firmly believed that it was the greatest asset Long Beach possessed. He never failed to make the interest of Long Beach harbor paramount whenever possible. From the first he believed that Long Beach would be the most important beach town in the states, and he lived to see this one ideal realized.
He was born at West Liberty, Ohio, March 4, 1856, and received lasting impressions of the outside world during the Civil war period, when the names of some of the greatest soldiers and statesmen of the period became known to him as citizens of Ohio. His father was Col. Thomas R. Roberts, a stern man who never understood the high strung, sensitive lad left in his care by the young mother's death. He grew up under adverse surroundings. One grandfather lived at Urbana and the other in West Liberty, ten miles apart. The boy frequently walked back and forth between these homes. When he was eight years of age he was sent to a severe convent school, but made his escape and returned to his grandfather. The maternal grand- father was a Methodist minister, and in his home and under his teachings Colonel Roberts received impressions that never left him.
He learned typesetting and served the apprenticeship of a newspaper man in country printing offices. He belonged to the old type of journalists,
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the school of Murat Halsted and Henry Watterson, with both of whom he had been closely associated as co-worker and friend. With them Mr. Roberts believed that the editorial chair was a great trust, as much a sacred calling as the ministry. It was a favorite saying of his that "a man who lacks keen interest in questions of public moment or pertain- ing to the interests of his community and fails in courage to express them is utterly unworthy the high calling of a publisher." He was staff cor- respondent for the St. Louis Globe-Democrat and the Chicago Inter-Ocean, and was a free lance writer in Washington when such great men as John G. Ingalls, John Sherman, Tom Reed and James G. Blaine we're at the national capital. He served as a reporter in Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis, New Orleans and other cities. For five years he was editorial writer for the San Francisco Post. For four years he was first vice president of the International League of Press clubs, an organization representative of American and European journalists.
From San Francisco he moved to Vallejo, California, where he con- ducted a newspaper, and in 1904 he moved to Long Beach and established the Daily Telegram, the first issue of which appeared the day before Christmas of 1904. Long Beach was then a town of about five thousand people, and the Telegram was an eight-page, six-column paper. The office force consisted of the editor, manager and one reporter, besides the mechanical department consisting of two or three others. Eighteen years later, when Colonel Roberts died, the Telegram was a great publishing establishment, with over three hundred and fifty people employed and with all the service of a modern metropolitan newspaper, published in the second largest city of Southern California.
Colonel Roberts was also for a time editor and proprietor of the Pasadena News. He was a prominent republican, was a candidate for Congress in 1914, and enjoyed the friendship of many of the state and national leaders of the party. He was an honorary director of the Long Beach Chamber of Commerce, and there were prominent representatives of practically every interest in the city, educational, religious, commercial and civic, who at the time of his death acknowledged the debt due to this courageous editor, forceful business man and high minded citizen.
At the age of twenty-one Colonel Roberts married Roxie Dressor, whose father was the owner of extensive lands in Illinois. She died within two years after their marriage, and the only surviving member of the family is his daughter, Belle McCord Roberts, who after the death of her father assumed the control, the publication and editorial direction of the Daily Telegram, with a view to fulfilling the trust implied in the long association between her father's life and the Telegram and its close relationship to the City of Long Beach.
In assuming the duties of her father's paper, under date of December 26, 1922, Miss Roberts sent out the following letter :
"Today I assume the control, the publication, and the editorial direction of The Daily Telegram of Long Beach, which was founded by my father, the late Frank C. Roberts, eighteen years ago today. Its creation was his life work; and his life and his work were so interwoven with the Telegram that the strands are inseparable. Within the limitations of the finite mind he strove to make the Telegram a powerful and fearless influence to champion all that made for the good of his city, his state and his country.
"As he realized that the time was at hand when life's victories and defeats were passed and that the places that had known him would know him no more forever, it was his expressed desire that I, who alone remain of his blood and lineage, and who understood him best and loved him best, should continue the work that he felt was just begun. It is to fulfill this trust that I turned from easier paths to do what he would have had me do. I shall strive to do it without fear and, I trust, without reproach.
"If it is an innovation for a woman to assume the publication of a daily newspaper, and to undertake the guidance of its policy and the direction of its business, I do so in the faith that, as my father's daughter, I shall
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have the encouragement and support of the republicans of the state and the kind wishes of those who count not life itself dear if they may serve the old party, the old state and the old flag.
"That is all that is now expected, but I will cherish the hope that under my direction the Telegram will so appeal to their sense of justice, honor, intelligence and integrity that, as its publisher, I may prove myself worthy of a place in the ranks of those who were my father's associates, companions and life-long friends."
RAYMOND E. CHASE, M. D. A native of New York State, Doctor Chase has lived in California. since early childhood, and is one of the popular and skillful physicians practicing at Glendale.
He was born in Rochester, New York, December 14, 1878, son of S. Everett Chase. In 1883 his parents came to California, locating in Los Angeles County, where his father spent the rest of his active career as a farmer and rancher. Doctor Chase attended the public schools, including the Los Angeles High School, and then entered the medical department of the University of Southern California, now affiliated with the University of California at Berkeley. He was a graduated Doctor of Medicine in the class of 1901 and in 'the twenty odd years of his practice has achieved a high standing in the profession in Los Angeles County. Doctor Chase remained in the City of Los Angeles until 1904 and since then has been located at Glendale. While a general practitioner he is well known in gynecology. He is a member of the Glendale Physicians Club.
Doctor Chase is a member of Unity Lodge No. 368, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, and Unity Chapter No. 116, Royal Arch Masons, a member of the Glendale Lodge No. 1289, Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, and is a member of the Glendale Chamber of Commerce. He is also affiliated with the Knights of Pythias. September 1, 1919, he married Miss Virginia Edwards of New York City, but a native of Virginia. She was educated in Joplin, Missouri. Mrs. Chase is a member of the Tuesday Afternoon Club of Glendale. They have one child, Shirley E.
MISS ESTHER RACKLIFF is a woman who has applied her talents to business with remarkable success. She has handled several large proposi- tions, and has for several years conducted as proprietor the Lady Gray Candy Shop, located on South San Pedro Street, Los Angeles.
Miss Rackliff was born at Corinna, Maine, daughter of H. B. and Helen Rackliff. She was educated at Lowell, Massachusetts, and is a graduate of Bradford Academy, the oldest ladies' seminary in the United States.
From the first she had the courage to undertake things not within the ordinary routine of woman's work. Soon after leaving school she opened the Thistle Tea Room and Gift Shop at Bangor, Maine. After selling this she came West, and for ten years she had the exclusive territory of Arizona and California as representative of the Sego Milk Company of Utah.
She has owned the Lady Gray Candy Shop for over two years. The first two years this did an annual business of about $50,000, and the third year the volume of business promises to run 50 per cent more. On buying the candy factory she decided that the most profitable line would be a five cents product, and the Lady Gray Candy Shop specializes in more than twenty different chocolate bar products, retailing for five cents. Her candy is sold to the largest wholesale houses in Southern California. Much of it is distributed by the Van Noy News Company, the largest organization of its kind in the country, distributing all the candy sold on trains and in railway stations. Recently Miss Rackliff received an order for ten thou- sand pounds of candy for the battleships. She has about twenty helpers, four salesmen and does a large part of the sales work herself. Her candies are known as the Lady Gray candies, and she herself is called Lady Gray by her intimate friends.
Miss Rackliff lives with her parents in Hollywood, in the beautiful home in the foothills known as Gray Gables. She is a woman to be greatly
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admired. She believes in her work, has confidence in herself, and is not afraid of the toil involved in her undertaking.
ANDREW H. DENKER was a pioneer in the hotel business at Los Angeles, and after retiring from that gave his attention to the management of his great landed estate in and around Los Angeles. He was a thorough busi- ness man, realized a fortune, and made his public spirit count in many ways in the early affairs of the growing city.
Mr. Denker died November 3, 1892, and did not witness the fulfillment of his vision of a great modern city. He was born in Bremen, Germany, October 17, 1840, and was thirteen years of age when he came to America. In the late fifties he came to California, and first located in one of the gold mining districts. At Havilah in Kern County he conducted a residence and subsequently a store and a hotel. From there he came to Los Angeles, which was still largely under the influence of the old Spanish-Mexican regime. Here he engaged in the hotel business, operating the United States Hotel and later the Cosmopolitan, which at that time was the finest hotel in appointment and service in the city.
While in the hotel business Mr. Denker and his brother-in-law invested in an immense acreage in Southern California, and after retiring from the hotel business he gave all his time to the development of his property. Among the large tracts they owned one included what is now the most exclusive residential section, Beverley Hills. This property was held by the family until a few years ago, being sold in 1915. Mr. Denker and his brother-in-law used much of their land for cattle raising and they were pioneers in commercial growing of lima beans in their section of California.
The family home for many years was at Ninth and Main streets, where the Marsh Strong Building now stands. Denker Street in Los Angeles was named for the late Andrew H. Denker. He was a Knight Templar Mason. Civic pride was one of his dominant characteristics, and he was interested in every project for the development of the city. Many of his investments were made on the guidance of his vision as to the future trend of development, and his descendants have profited by the wisdom he dis- played in selecting properties many years ago that have marvelously enhanced in value in subsequent years.
On May 3, 1873, Mr. Denker married Miss Louise Ruellan. She was born in Paris, France, and came to California with her mother. Mrs. Denker now lives at the West Adams Street mansion, and with her is her daughter Mrs. Maier and Mrs. Maier's daughter. Mr. and Mrs. Denker had five children : Marie and Antoinette, both of whom married sons of the wealthy pioneer family of Lichtenbergers; Mrs. Leontine Giannini, whose husband is president of the East River Bank of Italy of New York; Mrs. Isabel Maier ; and Louis A. Denker. The four grandchildren are Cecelia and Louise Denker, Bernard Giannini and Genevive, the daughter of Mrs. Maier.
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